Age Of Crisis Research Articles

A Curse upon the Nation: Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World by Kay Wright Lewis, and: John Adams, Slavery, and Race: Ideas, Politics, and Diplomacy in an Age of Crisis by Arthur Scherr

A Curse upon the Nation: Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World by Kay Wright Lewis, and: John Adams, Slavery, and Race: Ideas, Politics, and Diplomacy in an Age of Crisis by Arthur Scherr

Anthropocene futures: Linking colonialism and environmentalism in an age of crisis

The universal discourse of the Anthropocene presents a global choice that establishes environmental collapse as the problem of the future. Yet in its desire for a green future, the threat of collapse forecloses the future as a site for creatively reimagining the social relations that led to the Anthropocene. Instead of examining structures like colonialism, environmental discourses tend to focus instead on the technological innovation of a green society that “will have been.” Through this vision, the Anthropocene functions as a geophysical justification of structures of colonialism in the services of a greener future. The case of the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement illustrates how this crisis of the future is sutured into mainstream environmentalism. Thus, both in the practices of “the environment in crisis” that are enabled by the Anthropocene and in the discourse of geological influence of the “human race,” colonial structures privilege whiteness in our environmental future. In this case, as in others, ecological protection has come to shape the political life of colonialism. Understanding this relationship between environmentalism and the settler state in the Anthropocene reminds us that the universal discourse of the Anthropocene is intertwined with the attempt to sustain whiteness into the future.

Wanted: A Planetary History for an Age of Crisis

Wanted: A Planetary History for an Age of Crisis

All together now

Kane reviews Out of the Wreckage: A new politics for an age of crisis by George Monbiot; Assembly by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri; and Technically Together: Reconstructing community in a networked world by Taylor Dotson

Bruce Worthington (ed), Reading the Bible in an Age of Crisis: Political Exegesis for a New Day

Bruce Worthington (ed), <i>Reading the Bible in an Age of Crisis: Political Exegesis for a New Day</i>

Latin America in Global History: An Historiographic Overview

Abstract World history can be arranged into three major regional divergences: the 'Greatest Divergence' starting at the end of the last Ice Age (ca. 15,000 years ago) and isolating the Old and the New Worlds from one another till 1500; the 'Great Divergence' bifurcating the paths of Europe and Afro-Asia since 1500; and the 'American Divergence' which divided the fortunes of New World societies from 1500 onwards. Accordingly, all world regions have confronted two divergences: one disassociating the fates of the Old and New Worlds, and the other within either the Old or the New World. Latin America is in the uneasy position that in both divergences it ended up on the 'losing side.' As a result, a contentious historiography of Latin America evolved from the very moment that it was incorporated into the wider world. Three basic attitudes toward the place of Latin America in global history have since emerged and developed: admiration for the major impact that the emergence on Latin America on the world scene imprinted on global history; hostility and disdain over Latin America since it entered the world scene; direct rejection of and head on confrontation in reaction the former. This paper examines each of these three attitudes in five periods: the 'long sixteenth century' (1492-1650); the 'age of crisis' (1650-1780); 'the long nineteenth century' (1780-1914); 'the short twentieth century' (1914-1991); and 'contemporary globalization' (1991 onwards).

Transnationality or Globality? The Korean Wave and Methodological Challenges in Media and Cultural studies

Making the case for a new media/cultural studies that takes a transregional, transcultural and transdisciplinary approach, this contribution notes how the global popularity of Korean Wave has highlighted the limitations of methods rooted in notions of national identities. Studies have challenged western hegemony of knowledge production and are suggestive of new academic communities beyond Eurocentric nation states that may be both multinational and multicultural. This contribution however warns that a focus on de-westernising theory restores the singularity of the West. A more systematic framework is wanted. The Korean Wave’s global reception has hinted at a polymorphous globality of urban (mainly youth) culture emerging in metropolitan areas parallel to Korea’s ­Gangnam. In addition a transdisciplinary approach to media studies may ­reinvigorate the idea (from McCluhan) that the medium shapes culture, with the possibility: the medium becomes the methodology. Digital humanities suggest a new way of ­thinking about media practice/methodology that could overcome natural and human sciences ­binaries. The opportunity is consequently to be the first discipline of a new field in the age of crisis, rather than the remnants of an old one shivering in the face of a global academic ‘winter’.

Anthropocene Crises and the Origin of Modernity

Introduction “Anthropocene,” a word of recent coinage, designates the present age of the world, dominated, transformed, and finally endangered by successive feats of scientific and technological mastery. It has therefore become, undeniably, an age of crisis whose essential features, broadly construed, are quite familiar: technological exploitation of the earth and a withering of faith in any order, natural or supernatural, that could serve as a guide to human affairs. The twentieth century, the most technologically advanced century, was arguably the most barbaric; the very feats of scientific mastery designed for humanity's redemption became tools that threatened its destruction. While this…

The Cultural Left and the Reagan Era: U.S. Protest and Central American Revolution

Nick Witham makes an important contribution to our understanding of American political culture in the 1980s. He examines a group of intellectuals, journalists, and filmmakers who, deeply critical of Ronald Reagan's policies in Central America, sought to inform and mobilize a complacent public. Witham's main argument is that these cultural producers not only reflected a politics of opposition but also helped shape “the political processes” of that opposition (p. 4). Witham joins a growing number of scholars in challenging prevailing interpretations of the 1980s as defined disproportionately by Reagan. Americans experienced the so-called age of Reagan primarily as an age of crisis at home (homelessness, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, farm foreclosures, Superfund legislation, and factory shutdowns) and on the foreign policy front, regarding not only the Soviet Union and the Middle East but also, as Witham shows so effectively, Central America. Witham makes a solid if uneven case for the importance of this 1980s cultural front. He is not always successful in fulfilling his promise to demonstrate “the vital importance of a ‘cultural left’ to any movement for political and social change” because he too infrequently shows the impact of these cultural producers on the movements (p. 6). Even so, Witham does well in reminding us of a vibrant and important culture of opposition.

The "Misère de l’éducation" in the Age of Crisis

Over twenty years after the publication of La misere du monde (Bourdieu 1993), Pierre Bour-dieu’s work is still highly relevant. The social order that has led to a proliferation of the small miseries of the world seems to have prevailed: Pierre Bourdieu’s micro-sociological essay highlighted the symptoms of a disease that has gotten worse in the past few years, and prophetically predicted many of its current con-sequences. This article aims at analysing the consequences on the educational field where practices of service-sector Taylorism are emerging alongside the usual mechanisms of social reproduction. These practices are allegedly inspired by meritocracy, but actually aimed at the utilitarian exploitation of human resources. The students’ potential is thus trivialised, dumbed down to a few measurable variables on which teaching and selecting are based, according to a view that treats humans as merely means to an end. Thus, by concealing the social fabric in which individuals are rooted, any failure can be surreptitiously blamed on individual responsibilities. Sociological research has the crucial task of revealing the peculiar logic of this kind of mechanisms, more and more common in several fields, and their ideological implica-tions, typical of neoliberalism: because, as Bourdieu says, what the social world has done, it can, armed with this knowledge, undo (Bourdieu 1993d, 629)

Truth wars: the politics of climate change, military intervention and financial crisis

How 'true' is climate change, and how do we know? Who is to blame for the financial crisis? What is the truth about the drone wars? We live in an age of crises that are global in scale and potentially apocalyptic in severity. In response, the language of war has been increasingly deployed across a whole spectrum of ecological, social and economic problems: war on terror; war on warming; war on want; war on bankers' bonuses; war on drugs; war on waste; war on genocidal leaders. Peter Lee examines climate change, military intervention and financial collapse to reveal how truth is used by competing interests to shape individual behaviour, attitudes and identity.

Still a Place of Hope?: Immigration in the Periphery of Southern Europe in an Age of Crisis

Still a Place of Hope?: Immigration in the Periphery of Southern Europe in an Age of Crisis

The Development of Art and Literature in the Age of Crisis: Pan-Religious Outlook on Death from the Heian Period to the Kamakura Period

The Development of Art and Literature in the Age of Crisis: Pan-Religious Outlook on Death from the Heian Period to the Kamakura Period

Introduction: The end of a parable? Unsettling the transitology model in the age of crisis

This volume brings together scholars from the fields of history, political science, political economy, historical sociology and cultural studies, to comment on the theoretical and empirical unsettling of democratic transitions at the time of the economic crisis. The volume links together transitions in time and space, reappraising the democratic processes in Southern Europe in the mid-1970s, the post-1989 transformations in Eastern Europe, the effects of Southern Cone democratisations and the 2011 revolts in the Arab worlds, resisting both temporal particularities and national exceptionalisms. It further showcases how even supposed model transitions came under attack during the current economic crisis, thus highlighting the incloncusive nature of these events and the strong interconnections between past and present.

Review of Andrés Solimano, International Migration in the Age of Crisis and Globalisation. Historical and Recent Experiences, Cambridge University Press, 2010. 223 Pp.

Abstract “International Migration in the Age of Crisis and Globalization. Historical and Recent Experiences” represents a work of major interest in the field of migration and globalization. Apparently two concepts that relate one to another, on a background of major population dynamics, the two notions are the two important pillars in what might perfectly be described as a complex analysis of migration, starting from the elements that have initiated it, and culminating with a fine comparison of positive and negative aspects of this phenomenon. In the present paper, we acknowledge the vast “semantic” bound implied by the concept of migration. Apart from inherent aspects such as the importance of remittances, the unravelling of families or the frequently discussed brain-drain, we are presented an image of Latin America, a region dominated by contradictions, since it may well be considered as both destination region and net immigration labour force.

Identifying with the Nation: Spain's Left-Wing Citizens in an Age of Crisis

This study analyses the extent, sense, and strategies employed by sympathisers with Spanish state-wide left-wing parties to ‘reconstruct’ their affective ties with the Spanish nation after the ‘monopolisation of patriotism’ by Franco's regime. Such an undertaking is further complicated within the context of economic crisis and intensified peripheral nationalism found in Catalonia and the Basque Country. This article applies qualitative analysis to the discourse of left-wing participants from 11 focus groups held in March 2012 amidst the economic (and political) crisis. As expected, this context of crisis favoured the emergence of explicit discourse on the Spanish nation, providing an opportunity to gain a better understanding of its nature. Findings show that welfare nationalism and social patriotism define the kind of attachment developed by the interviewees towards Spain better than the concept of constitutional patriotism, or any kind of ethnic-cultural feeling of belonging.

Reclaiming Paedeia in an Age of Crises: Education and the necessity of wisdom

Education needs to prepare students to have understanding of themselves, of their relationships to others, to have an ability to make good moral and other judgements and to act on these. If education has a role to play in the alleviation of the crises facing the world, then there is some urgency in reflecting on what kind of education is needed in order to prepare young people to tackle these many crises. It is our contention that the major problem with modern education is that it has forgotten that its main task is helping students to learn to be wise. That is, in considering the aims of education, it is proposed that it is wisdom which is the main aim of education. This will be so whatever level of education we are discussing, though much of our discussion refers to higher education.

Classical distributive justice and the European healthcare system: rethinking the foundations of European health care in an age of crises.

The state subvention and distribution of health care not only jeopardize the financial sustainability of the state, but also restrict without a conclusive rational basis the freedom of patients to decide how much health care and of what quality is worth what price. The dominant biopolitics of European health care supports a healthcare monopoly in the hands of the state and the medical profession, which health care should be (re)opened to the patient's authority to deal directly for better basic health care. In a world where it is impossible for all to receive equal access to the best of basic health care, one must critically examine the plausible scope of the authority of the state to limit access to better basic health care. Classical distributive justice affords a basis for re-examining the current European ideology of equality, human dignity, and solidarity that supports healthcare systems with unsustainable egalitarian concerns.

Muslims of medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050-1614

Introduction: Islam and Latin Christendom to 1050 Part I. Static Diasporas: Muslim Communities of Latin Christendom: 1. The tide turns: the Christian Spains I (c.1050-c.1150) 2. A triumph of pragmatism: the Christian Spains II (c.1150-c.1320) 3. Pushing the boundaries: Italy and North Africa (c.1050-c.1350) 4. Infidels in the Holy Land: the Latin East (1099-1291) 5. Diversity in an age of crises: the Christian Spains III (c.1350-1526) 6. Strangers in strange lands: foreign Muslims and slaves in Latin Christendom (c.1050-c.1550) 7. Christians in name: the Morisco problem (1499-1614) Part II. Living in Sin: Islamicate Society under Latin Dominion: 8. Thought: images and ideals of Muslims and Islamicate society in Latin Christendom 9. Word: law, administration and Islamicate society under Latin rule 10. Deed: the economic, social and cultural life of the Muslims of Latin Christendom Postscript: Convivencia, intolerance ... or 'questions badly put'?

The age of ecology: a global history

Preface to the English Edition vii Acknowledgements xiv Introduction: The Green Chameleon 1 One Environmentalism before the Environmental Movement 11 1 Good Mother Nature and the Appalling Wood Shortage : The Twin Face of Nature in the Decline of the Commons 11 2 Nature in Need of Protection and Nature as Healing Power: Environmental Activism in the Nervous Age 24 3 The Desert Threatens : Environmental Fears in the Age of Crisis the New Deal and Nazi Germany 46 4 Think Big! A Charismatic Intermezzo on the Olympian Heights 61 Two The Great Chain Reaction: The Ecological Revolution in and around 1970 79 Three Networked Thinking and Practical Priorities: An Endless Interplay 114 1 On the Ecology of Ecologism 121 2 Water and the Atom 137 3 Changing Priorities: The Movement in Motion 162 Four Charismatics and Ecocrats 182 1 Spiritual Quest and Charismatic Moments 182 2 Ten Heroines Embodying Tensions in the Movement 201 3 Institutionalization, Routinization, Revitalization 237 Five A Friend Enemy or Win-Win Scenario? 259 1 From Nuclear Power to the Spotted Owl 259 2 Violence and the Green Conscience 288 3 Ecology and Economics: The Challenge of Conceptual Analogy 320 Six Ecology and the Historic Turn of 1990: From Social Justice to Climate Justice? 339 Conclusion: The Dialectic of Green Enlightenment 425 Notes 432 Index 517